Friday, March 14, 2014

This is the full, long, somewhat too sarcastic and personal version of an article of mine posted on Estonian Public Broadcasting's English-language page. It is a rebuttal to this opinion piece.

In all that is going on around Ukraine, the thing that
bothers me most is the occupation of sovereign territory by the army of a
country that borders my own, closely followed by the increasingly real
possibility of a shooting war in Eastern Europe. But being worried about that
is not particularly original or insightful; that opinion should, and has been,
expressed by far more relevant people than me. What I can speak of is the public
perception and public opinion regarding the events in Ukraine, and the idea,
expressed by Ekaterina Taklaja, editor of ERR’s Russian service, that the truth
is somewhere in between. It may be in between, but it is not in the middle.

I have been following the (misleadingly named) Euromaidan
since the start, since late November – partially through the mainstream media, mostly
Russian with some Estonian and English sources thrown in, but mainly through
social networks. Full disclosure: I have friends in Kiev, people I personally
know, people who were out in the square, protesting, from day one. Some of them
are faces you might have seen in news clips that have gone viral (if you are a
Russian-speaker). Others were just there, posting short Facebook messages to
coordinate with others around the city, letting everyone know that they were
heading out or that they’d returned safely. More importantly, as a native
Russian-speaker with an interest in politics, I have a wealth of experience
arguing on the Internet that goes back to before our own Bronze Soldier riots.
My venue of choice has been a popular but very strictly moderated one, heavily
policed against ad-hoc attacks and insults; in the process of luring my
opponents into indefensible positions, I have developed the skill of calmly
looking at what’s actually there, rather than what I expect to see. In this
kind of situation, people will very frequently look at something fairly
unambiguous, but perceive it as something quite different. What you are hearing
is not my words, but the voice inside your own head.

This, I fear, has happened to Ekaterina Taklaja after too
much exposure to Estonia’s tabloids and their comment threads – bad places to
get an accurate gauge of broad public opinion at the best of times.

First, Taklaja believes that in Estonia, there can only be
one opinion on Ukraine; that “Yanukovych
is a scoundrel, Putin always lies and Savisaar is the main enemy of Estonian
statehood. Those who doubt it, are traitors of the Estonian state.” This
mixes three very different issues into one, and attempts to force you into
accepting or dismissing them wholesale. If one is true, then all must be true,
and if one is false, then all must be false, right?

Yanukovich is indeed a scoundrel. He is a convicted felon
twice over; he is a superbly corrupt politician, who siphoned vast amounts of
money from Ukraine’s state funds to the private fortunes of himself, his
family, and his oligarch cronies. He is also an astoundingly terrible
president. He attempted to hang on to power in the face of dwindling popularity
by dangling the carrot of an EU association agreement for something like a
year, then arbitrarily decided against it; when a bunch of students and
middle-class Kievans protested, he unnecessarily sent in the riot police
against them (remember, the original 2004 Maidan involved no violence at all),
sparking much more serious outrage. Even then he could have stepped back from
the brink: after negotiating billions in loans from Russia, there was every
chance that the Maidan would eventually disperse, and with the immediate
economic crisis averted, those unhappy with him could have convinced themselves
to wait until the presidential elections scheduled for 2015. With a year to
prepare, Yanukovich could have either built up his popularity again, or taken
the money and gone off to his own private island somewhere – all very back-room
diplomatic, with the blessing of EU leaders. Instead he reacted with violence,
leading to an escalation on both sides that claimed the lives of nearly a
hundred people, then fled the country. Yes, the leaders of the 2004 Maidan also
turned out to be unpleasant characters; that does not make Yanukovich less of a
scoundrel.

Putin does not always lie, although he sometimes seems out
of touch with what’s going on in his own country. He has concentrated ultimate
power within Russia in his own hands; nobody can stand up to him; he is
surrounded by people who owe their fortunes to him on the one hand, and are
justifiably terrified of his wrath on the other. Like many dictators, he
probably exists in a bubble of things he wants to hear. He did not create that
aspect of the Russian mentality that considers the West weak and decadent and
tainted, even if he has used and amplified it to great effect. And when he says
out loud that the “little green men” in Crimea are not Russian soldiers, this
lie is so blatant as to not be deception, but political doublespeak befitting a
world leader. Absolutely everyone can read between the lines, even his own
supporters, and those dumb enough to earnestly believe in the propaganda of
Russian state media have nobody to blame but themselves.

Savisaar is not necessarily the enemy of Estonian statehood,
he is simply very bad for the country. Ever since he was caught just as he was
about to take money from the head of the Russian state railway, he has been
lambasted in the media – traditional and social – for entirely domestic
policies. Savisaar’s myopic populism does not have to coincide with Russia’s
official position to cause outrage among those who care about Estonia’s
well-being beyond the intensely personal issues of free public transport and a
grocery store subsidized by taxes on someone else’s earnings. The mayor of
Tallinn is perfectly capable of coming up with outrageously terrible ideas all
on his own. It is his desire to take any position that is the opposite of the
ruling government’s that leads him to spew the Kremlin’s propaganda. I don’t
actually think Savisaar is an idiot, but to Putin, he is a useful one.

Savisaar’s statement that Ukraine’s new leadership is a
bunch of illegitimate thugs is very easy to refute with facts – they are
elected members of parliament, acting in lieu of the absconded president, and
one of their first actions was to call new presidential elections as swiftly as
reasonable. (I remain available to answer Taklaja’s queries in regard to
whether I have stopped beating my wife yet.) In our democratic state, Savisaar
is entirely free to express his opinion without being beaten up – unlike in
Yanukovich’s Kiev – but he is the leader of a major political party, and an
opinion he expresses on the record in an interview with a journalist is
absolutely something for which he can be called to task by the people whom he
invites to vote for him. Unlike, say, the remark of Foreign Minister Paet in an
off-the-record phone conversation, where he does not express that Estonia’s
official position is counter to reality, but in fact mentions a disturbing
rumor he’s heard and encourages his colleague to investigate it. (A rumor since
dispelled by the very person Paet says mentioned it to him.) Taklaja’s reaction
to the tape mirrors that of many people in both traditional and social media,
and it is the best example yet of what I mentioned earlier – listening to one
thing and hearing another. Anyway, Paet has been condemned for his unfortunate,
if private, rumor-mongering – he would have been a front-runner for the Prime
Minister’s seat if the tape had not leaked.

Those who disagree with the majority opinions are not
traitors to the Estonian state unless they are desperately looking for someone
to say they are, so that they can feel the moral satisfaction of being
persecuted without any of the practical inconveniences. This I say to Ekaterina
Taklaja, in rebuttal to her article published in Estonia’s state-controlled
media outlet.

Incidentally, if there has not been much demand in the media
for the opinions of general Laaneots, then I wonder how Taklaja happened upon them. Were they dropped
off at her desk, but refused publication by the traitor-seeking censors of ERR?

As for her counterparts she lists in Russia – well; Lenta.ru
has been gutted through the replacement of the editor-in-chief by a corporate
spin doctor prized for his affiliations with the Kremlin, and that
publication’s entire editorial staff is looking for new jobs. TV Rain (Dožd) was cut off by scared cable
operators a few months before, on the pretense of an insult to the nation (a
poll of viewers’ opinions on whether it was not better, in World War II, to
surrender Leningrad rather than subject its population to the hardships of the
legendary blockade); and newsru.com is run out of Israel. Since Taklaja’s
article was written, the Russian authorities have gone ahead with measures to
block any website critical of Putin or Russia’s actions in Ukraine, including
both news outlets and private blogs platforms. Echo of Moscow, which takes care
to offer air time to pro-Putin pundits, is still ticking over, but its parent
company is a division of Gazprom, and it exists entirely on the sufferance of
the Kremlin. Don’t change the channel, we’ll be right back; or not.

Yes, there are uncomfortable facts about Maidan. It started
out as a peaceful protest, but in the face of riot police, it called on anyone
who had a fighting spirit, including football hooligans and far-right groups
(although independent Ukraine’s history of racial intolerance is barely a blip
compared to Russia’s own; possibly because there just aren’t very many people
living there who don’t look interchangeably Slavic). Yes, when a protest turns
to a melee, people will get hurt, and disarmed riot policemen will not always
be treated well (although they have been treated so in a surprising majority of
cases). Yes, the opposition bigwigs who formed the new leadership of Ukraine
have murky pasts and occasionally still make bad or corrupt decisions, but
let’s not forget that none of this seemed even remotely plausible six months
ago. Remember the early 90s in Estonia? How long did it take us to go from
independence to stability and a genuine rule of law? People born in independent
Estonia are legitimately having children of their own these days, and we’d
still rather support a Prime Ministerial candidate who used to be in the
Communist Youth than a young and unproven one.

Taklaja dislikes that Estonia’s homogenized public opinion
Ukraine lacks alternative options, and then dislikes that Estonian traditional
media turn to Ukrainians living here for comments on the political situation. I
find that to be a practical alternative option to leaving all the column inches
and screen time to professional talking heads. Political scientists and think
tank regulars may offer well-researched background information, but when it
comes to a popular uprising, citizens are indeed legitimate experts on the
situation, especially ones who dare to speak publicly on it. Taklaja knows a
lot about what democracy isn’t; here’s something that democracy is.

I agree that there is a sense of fakeness in us putting
Ukrainian flag colors on our userpics. You know those little Estonian flags
that you can jam in car windows? I bought one, for road trips and rental cars
abroad. Using it inside Estonia proper is gaudy, I think. I helped out a band
with translating the lyrics for a patriotic song from Ukrainian/Estonian into
English, and couldn’t bring myself to sign off an email with “Glory to heroes”,
the shibboleth of the Maidan, because I felt like I had no right to use it. But
that’s a matter of personal taste, and I won’t condemn anyone for feeling
otherwise. I am reminded of an old book, where the general of one side in a
civil war tells his troops to remove his family insignia from their uniforms:
“Let the traitors mark themselves as something different; we fly the colors of
our country.” I would much sooner fly the blue and yellow of Ukraine than the
black and orange of the (misnamed) ribbon of St. George.

We do not believe Ukraine is a democratic country with no
corruption; the point, Ms Taklaja, is exactly
that it isn’t and hasn’t been – but now it has the chance to be. We do not know
if the new Ukrainian government can be trusted, but we are impressed by the
fact that the Maidan protesters haven’t the least intention of trusting it;
they intend to verify, to monitor and control the new government, and in the
social media that I read in Russian, there have been calls for the metaphorical
head of this or that new official for inexplicable actions, even while one
might expect the people to place their implicit and full faith in the
government until the foreign invasion has been repelled.

And if alternative options and opinions are called for, then
here is one: Crimea may have gotten its greater autonomy, its language law
guarantees, and perhaps eventually even its independence through negotiations
with a new Ukrainian government, one which was answerable to its people and
committed to improving the fortunes of the entire country, rather than their
own. In a lawful Ukraine, the already autonomous Crimea could have easily gone
the way of Scotland (or at least Pakistan), and who’s to say that Kiev, eager
for NATO membership, would not have ceded the peninsula as a way to resolve
with one move the headache of having a huge foreign military base on its
territory? I’m not intrinsically troubled by the idea of a Crimean referendum –
as long as it is conducted without “little green men” patrolling the streets,
without the beatings of opposition activists, and without turning away OSCE
monitors with gunfire. I am writing this on March 14th, and I have a
bottle of excellent Scottish whisky here that I am willing to bet on this
Sunday’s referendum being called in Russia’s favor. Any takers?

A conflict is usually not black and white, but it very
rarely 50% greyscale. Taklaja’s position is an easy and safe one to take,
especially for a journalist who is trained to value balanced reporting. But it
is also an easy path to a logical fallacy, that if two sharply conflicting
opinions exist, then they are equidistant from the truth. The truth is indeed
out there, but it is rarely in the middle. To quote an overly emotional wording
that’s been going around the Russian-speaking social media in the last few
days, some people believe the Holocaust happened, and some people believe that Jews
drink the blood of Christian babies; and guess what? The truth is not somewhere
half way.